8 Reasons Most UA Strategies Fail as they Scale

Your ROAS is like an iceberg. The biggest killers are invisible. UA teams need to dig below the surface to save their ROAS.

  The full conversation with Kohort’s Nilay and Bruno on what they see as the biggest traps to UA scaling. 1. Giving paid networks credit for organics  Many studios misattribute organic installs to paid channels when they analyse performance, inflating metrics that crumble at scale.

  The fix? Use regression analysis to separate baseline organics (app store features, brand) from incremental organics that paid channels actually generate. Stop crediting networks for users who would have come anyway.

2. ROAS Curves ≠ Universal Laws Assuming ROAS curves behave consistently across geos, platforms, and campaign types is expensive. You're most vulnerable when you have the least data, launching new networks or geos.

Don’t just use ratios from one channel on a new channel. For example, a team with SDK network data will catastrophically overestimate returns on rewarded networks, where ROAS peaks much earlier and then flatlines.   Accurate prediction requires stable traffic data, clear confidence intervals, and humility about operating outside your training set.

Otherwise, you're simply gambling. 3.   When you tell Meta to hit 12% ROAS at day seven, are you looking for gross or net returns?

Your MMP doesn’t do any conversion by default -  IAP is usually gross, IAA is always net, and networks have no idea what you actually need. The difference? App store fees and VAT can reduce returns by 30-40%.

So, Meta giving you 100% ROAS does not equal a happy CFO.   Solutions are painful: convert all MMP integrations to net (breaks campaigns during transition) or build a data layer to track true net ROAS . Without alignment, you'll hit revenue targets at 63 cents on the dollar.

And just to be clear, that’s a miss. 4. Connecting LTV and CPI, revenue, and spend Higher spending doesn't just raise CPI; it changes the CPI-LTV relationship unpredictably.

As you scale beyond core audiences, CPI rises - everyone knows this. But LTV can also change (higher CPIs can mean higher-quality users, or you could start targeting users that aren’t in your core audience and retain less).   Kohort's analysis of $6 billion in UA spend shows elasticity varies dramatically between IAP/IAA apps, geos, and campaign types.

The iron triangle of marketing: you can't control spend, profit margins, and acquisition costs simultaneously. Pick two, negotiate the third. 5.